The China Cloud: A Discussion with Enomaly’s Reuven Cohen

Reuven Cohen is the founder of Enomaly, a cloud services provider. He is also one of the original CloudCamp founders. He travels more than most people I know. And a lot of that travel is to China and the Asia Pacific region. He is one of the first cloud people to start doing business in China and the Asia Pacific region.

I asked Cohen to do an interview and he politely listened to my naive questions about the centralized nature of cloud computing in China. China came up as a topic at IDF more than I ever recall discussing at the many user conferences I attend. It’s primarily due to the server infrastructure China is developing and the big business it is drawing for Intel.

For instance, I spoke with Boyd Davis, vice president of the Intel Architecture Group and general manager of data center marketing. Davis works in Intel’s data center group. He says high performance computing (HPC) is a topic that has more relevance with the growing importance of big data.

There are any number of examples how HPC harnesses the digital world to deliver insights into the “real” world.

HPC can be used to predict when to evacuate a coast line. It can be used or for use in exploring the outer layers of space. In one briefing I attended, a professor from the University of California at Berkeley said that there is question now about the growing importance of the role computer scientists now play in cancer research. Are these people more important than the researchers themselves? Research is fundamental but the data volumes from the research requires a high degree of understanding about programming languages and how to gleam understanding from quantitative and qualitative data.

The government of China gets this far better than our leaders do here in the United States. It’s a shame. I joked that I would be investing billions in high performance computing if I were the leader of an African nation. Of course, my cloudy ideas are not steeped in reality as I was reminded of the cash required to make these investments not to mention the educational institutions needed to grow the talent necessary to truly get value from HPC. Still, it is a global race. And China is by far buying the most HPC technology.

Cohen gives a basic overview of China and the Asia markets. We cover:

Cloud Valley.

CloudCamp’s role in establishing Enomaly in China market.

The size and scale of the overall market.

The lacking China infrastructure and its brittle “tree and branch network.”

How China is treating cloud computing as a utility.

The development of a content delivery network to connect Chinese cities.

Services Angle

Cohen talks a lot about the opportunity in China, perhaps most illustrated by the investment IBM is making in Cloud Valley. China and the Asia Pacific regions do not want to buy software, Cohen said. Customers want packaged solutions. And that’s a recipe perfect for service providers.